If you’ve been anywhere near social media during the last few weeks, you are at least somewhat aware of the current situation surrounding Kate Middleton, the wife of Prince William and (theoretical) future Queen of England.
Kate has been out of the public eye since December as part of an organized and publicly announced absence. In January, Kensington Palace said she had a “planned abdominal surgery” and would remain in private recovery until at least Easter. This was largely all fine and good and uncommented upon by the general public… until William dipped out of his godfather’s memorial service on February 27, citing “personal reasons,” at which point everyone started to lose their damn minds.
Since then, there have been multiple spectacular failures by the royal family to quash any speculation that Kate is either a) severely unwell 2) dead (natural) 3) dead (murdered), 4) refusing her duties as a reaction to William’s infidelity 5) some combination thereof or 6) something else entirely, with theories including but not limited to something something King Charles is dead, something something Obama is involved. It’s CHAOS. First, there was the shady car shot, then the Photoshop fail, and then things hit an absolute fever pitch this week when a grainy video of “William” and “Kate” at the Windsor Farm Shop (their own goddamn market!) was released by TMZ. This was finally the piece of media that radicalized me (and other Discourse Bloggers) and I knew once I’d gone to the dark side that I needed to be talked down by our in-house royals expert, Jack. And I knew we needed to record it for the benefit of you, our loyal readers. Thus a podcast episode was born, and now available for you to hear!
Did he convert my conspiracy brain? Absolutely not. Instead, we talked for over an hour about the series of events that got us to this place, what really, truly might be happening with Kate, how this whole situation got so unbelievably out of hand, and how this fiasco fits into the ongoing unraveling of the Windsors. (Jack kindly edited it down so you don’t have to hear every moment of us disconnecting from reality.)
Listen, learn, and please join us in the comments to speculate wildly on what exactly is happening here. Surely there is MUCH to come in this story. Hopefully Buckingham Palace doesn’t move too quickly with hiring that communications assistant.
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